The world’s Amphibians are in the grips of the worst extinction crisis this planet has seen since the dinosaurs were wiped out. It's a catastrophe that will reverberate through the entire web of life yet it fails to grab headlines like pandas or polar bears. This blog is dedicated to the ugly, the freakish and the unloved animals that are perilously ignored thanks to the tyranny of cute.

08/28/2012

My new job as a presenter for National Geographic Wild affords
me some rare privileges but the opportunity to take part in relocating an
entire troop of baboons for my 'Freaks and Creeps' series ranks as one of the most memorable.

If you want to compile a list of the world’s most unpopular
animals, baboons are way up there, vying for the top spot with sharks. With
canines longer and sharper than a leopard and the strength to rip a man’s arm
off they’re not exactly cuddly. In fact many cultures believe they are evil.

In a contest between a leopard and a baboon, with his razor sharp intellect and canines, my money's on the baboon

I’m a sucker for the ugly and unloved so when we were
planning our filming trip in South Africa, baboons were at the top of my list.
Little did I know that meeting these monkeys would prove to be something of a
personal test.

Bob Venter is the baboon’s biggest fan. He runs the
Riverside baboon rescue centre and watching him frolic and chatter with these
misunderstood animals you might even think he is part baboon himself. Bob has spent decades successfully
rescuing and rehabilitating baboons giving him a unique understanding of their
complex society, supreme intelligence and powers of communication. Many arrive
as orphaned babies, stolen from their mothers for the pet trade or for use as
traditional medicine. They may look cute but my first encounter with one of
these babies was challenging to say the least.

Baboon skulls are regularly sold in the Muti (traditional medicine) market in Johannesburg as protection for people's homes

Three-month old Matthew lived in the youngsters enclosure
with a bunch of other orphaned toddlers. It was clear that he had future alpha
male written all over him as he was by far the most curious and naughty. As I
approached the cage he began shrieking and displaying a rather tumescent
appendage - slightly unnerving behaviour in one so young. As I nervously
entered the cage, Matthew registered his delight by delivering a large steaming
poo on my left shoulder. Let’s just say that this was far from endearing.
Baboons after all are omnivores and this was a seriously smelly greeting on my
much beloved Barbour jacket. It flashed across my mind that maybe it’s true and
baboons really are evil.

Bob assured me that I would get used to and even begin to
like the intense smell of baboon excrement. I struggled to see how this would
happen but he was right that baboon poo would become a constant feature of my
three days at the sanctuary.

I had come to help Bob with the release of 28 baboons. An
entire troop that, like some sort of baboon wizard, Bob had assembled over
several years from orphaned and injured individuals from all around the
country. This would be the first time anyone had ever attempted to release a
whole baboon troop and was the climax of years of planning and hard work.

Bob had been waiting patiently for five years for exactly
the right moment when the baboons had bonded sufficiently as a group for them
to be released. This had recently happened in a rather unusual way. A wild
male, escaping from an angry farmer’s shotgun had jumped the fence of the adult
enclosure and decided to stay to join Bob’s group as the new alpha male. He had
sealed his status by mating with Daisy, the lead female, and fathering the
troop’s first baby.

Daisy and her baby

The arrival of Daisy’s baby had been the glue that Bob had
been waiting for. It really brought the troop together and now Bob knew that
these baboons would look out for each other and survive in the big wild world.
At last it was time for them to be free.

Stage one was to capture the baboons and transport them to
the release site. Easier said than done. Baboons don’t take too kindly to being
told what to do so we would have to use cunning to try and outwit them.

A local vet had come along to dart each of the animals using
a tranquiliser gun. We then had to carry the drugged monkeys to a makeshift
MASH tent where they received a medical before being placed in individual cages
for transport. These monkeys can weigh up to 100 pounds and I did my back in
carrying multiple baboons, which is not something I ever thought I’d say. I
also became increasingly familiar with baboon poo as the sleeping animals left
their mark on my now heavily abused jacket.

Crap on my hands. Again.

But handling these sleeping giants allowed me a rare
opportunity to examine the powerful males close up. Evolution has crafted an
animal of such perfection it gave me goose bumps. Its famous canines are
self-sharpening and like razors as a result. In fact one of the males bore a
deep wound in its incredibly thick skin – the result of a tussle for dominance
– that showed just how effective they are. We share 91% of our DNA with baboons
and staring into their eyes it is hard not to feel some connection.

Sleeping baboons can't blink so here I am applying eyedrops to the Alpha male to keep his eyes moist while we do our checks.

Bob had chosen a beautiful bush location in the midst of a
private reserve, far away from humans, for their new home. Baboon heaven. This
would be what’s known as a soft release. Whereby the animals spend the first
two weeks surrounded by a temporary electric fence to stop them escaping. If
they were simply set free into the wild the shock of the experience would cause
them to run off in all directions, disbanding the troop and reducing their
chances of survival to slightly more than zero. This way they had a chance to
get used to their new home as a group before the fence is taken down and they
are totally free.

Releasing the baboons into their new home was not without
its drama. Some of them were anxious about being in the small cages, bringing
back unpleasant memories of their time as pets. The door to their new enclosure
was wider than that of their individual cages so as we released them I had to
wedge myself in the gap to prevent them escaping. This was scary enough but
hovering inches from my head was the 10,000 volt electric fence. Bob kept
warning me about the fence but it is somewhat hard to concentrate when you have
a severely agitated alpha male baboon grabbing at your legs. And sure enough I
hit my head on the fence and blacked out from the shock.

Moments before my sizzling lobotomy my head hovers precariously close to the electric wire

It was a totally surreal experience. I came to, wondering
where the hell I was and why there was a camera pointing at me. Then I
remembered I was presenting a TV show and releasing 28 baboons. Of course! Bob
told me he had seen grown men thrown to the ground by the experience. I was
apparently saved by the thick soles on my boots. Phew.

Despite a broken back, the omnipresent stench of baboon poo
and the unscheduled electro shock therapy, taking part in this exercise was
actually one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

Baboons have a reputation for being aggressive animals but
their sophisticated society is actually largely built on friendship. It is
these bonds that make them such a successful species. To see these fascinating
animals happily chattering away, tenderly grooming one another and exploring
their new home as a group was hugely emotional and something that I will
treasure for the rest of my life. Thanks to Bob these monkeys had escaped death
or a fate even worse and were finally on the road to being wild again.

'Freaks and Creeps: Africa's Freaky Five' premieres in the Uk on National Geographic Wild at 8pm on Tuesday August 28th. For more information on the show and when it is repeated click here.

08/05/2012

Sid the baby pangolin sucks down his special smoothie of termites and milk

As you know I'm not prone to cooing over cute but if I were this would be my number one squee: Sid, a baby pangolin. Most of you may have never heard of a pangolin before, and if you have you probably thought it was some sort of medieval musical instrument. But it is in fact an extremely shy anteater from Africa and Asia whose name comes from the Malay word 'pengulling' which means 'something that rolls up'. When under attack this walking pine cone curls himself into a tight ball, protecting his soft underbelly with his scaly razor-sharp armour.

The closest I get to cooing over a cutie: Lucy and Louise fuss over little Sid

Fortunately Sid and his mother were rescued by Louise Joubert who promptly released them. But Sid's mom, no doubt suffering extreme stress, went on to reject her month old baby so now Louise is Sid's surrogate mom. Not being a pangolin herself, Louise has had a steep learning curve on how to care for these enigmatic creatures that's led to some highly inventive solutions. Her first mission was how to keep Sid calm and warm. She'd seen baby pangolins cling to their mom's back in the first few months of their life so Louise created a somewhat fluffier facsimile: a hot water bottle stuffed inside a teddy bear. Fortunately Sid immediately took to snuggling up against his toastie teddy and began to cheer upconsiderably.

This is what a happy baby pangolin looks like

Next step is what to feed him. Adult pangolins have no teeth but an extremely long tongue that's stickier than a cinema carpet which they use to hoover up thousands of termites every day. So for baby Sid, Louise headed to her kitchen where she conjured up a very special smoothie: milk with a sprinkling of termites whizzed up in the blender.

When I arrived for filming, Louise decided it was time to give Sid his first taste of live termite. We drove out into the bush and located a massive termite mound and it was my job to break it open and get the bugs. But termite mounds are tough as concrete, which goes to show how strong pangolin claws are, and in the process of trying to crack it open I smacked myself in the nose with the pick axe. Ouch. After considerable effort I managed to release a single termite but Sid was more interested in cuddling up on his teddy than eating it.

This is what a happy pangolin fan looks like, even after a fight with a pick axe

Louise tells me that a few months later Sid did catch and eat his first termite and is due to be released back into the wild later this year at a secret location. Fingers crossed he manages to stay hidden this time around as his species is in danger of becoming extinct in the next ten years if the poaching doesn't stop. The world would be a poorer place without this magical creature that looks more like an extra from Star Wars than a mammal from the African Bush.

From Louise's sofa....

...to the wild. Sid has had a most peculiar journey for a pangolin

Meet Sid in 'Freaks and Creeps: The Freaky Five' on Tuesday July 31st at 10pm and repeated on Saturday August 4th at 10pm, Monday 6th at 10pm, Tuesday 7th at 1pm and Saturday 11th at 10pm on National Geographic Wild

Borneo is a bit like Alice in Wonderland: a topsy-turvy land where animals have been drinking magic potions that make them grow into giants or shrink into midgets. The kind of place where the world's smallest frog, about the size of a pea, is dwarfed by the world's longest bug -- a stick insect that grows to over two feet. I love freaks, so when I hear that there are even pygmy elephants, I have to film them. But this particular adventure almost ends in an intimate encounter with one giant you really don't want to meet close up.

A recent saltie caught in the Phillipines was over 20 feet long, photograph by AP

The Danau Girang biological field center is situated on the banks of the mighty Kinabatangan river, which winds its way into the heart of Borneo. When I arrive, director Benoit Goosens welcomes me to his jungle kingdom and informs me there is just one rule: no swimming in the river. Its chocolate-colored waters are home to the world's biggest reptile: the saltwater crocodile. These ancient monsters grow to over 20 feet long and have a taste for human flesh; almost 40 people have been attacked in the area in the last decade. Rarely has swimming seemed less appealing.

Our primary reason for visiting the center is to join Benoit's team on a mission to radio tag a wild proboscis monkey -- a freaky primate with a giant bulbous nose, massive pot-belly and Donald Trump hair. This can only happen under the cover of darkness. So I persuade Benoit to take us up river to see the elephants before sunset.

The lead male proboscis monkey took quite a shine to me

It's a gorgeous, sunny afternoon and I'm in a great mood. I love biology field stations as they allow me to release my inner geek. Everyone here is as obsessed with nature as me. Nobody thinks you're weird to be totally over excited about an encounter with a pygmy pachyderm. What could possibly go wrong?

Phil Stebbing my intrepid producer nurses our bandaged-up camera at the field station

The journey itself is pretty exciting. Benoit has to take care to avoid the massive tree trunks, deadly detritus from Borneo's logging industry, hurtling towards us in the swollen waters. An hour and a half of weaving speedily upriver and we spot the elephants, about twenty of them hanging out on the bank. From the safety of the boat we can get quite close, although Benoit doesn't want to get too close and frighten them. They are much less aggressive than their African relatives and only two-thirds the size. They really do look tiny. Especially the baby, which is having a ball learning how to use its trunk by squirting water on its back. I shudder to admit it, but it's really rather cute.

Benoit measures up an adult pygmy elephant

Elephants are not native to Borneo. The origin of these miniature mutant mammoths is shrouded in mystery but the most popular story casts them as royal refugees. Back in the fourteenth century the Raja of the nearby island of Java gave two Javanese elephants to the Sultan of Sulu. Centuries later, the descendants of these two elephants were sent by the Sultan to Borneo to help with the shipbuilding industry but were released into the forest. With Javanese elephants extinct, these exiled specimens are ironically the last of their species. Sadly their population has also shrunk by half thanks to deforestation but Benoit is working hard to establish a conservation plan for them.

Meeting Wallace's flying frog was the highlight of my trip to Borneo

On the way back we are all in high spirits when suddenly a storm looms and we're engulfed by a menacing black sky. Then, for no apparent reason, the boat starts taking on water. Phil, my intrepid field producer, asks me to pass him something to start bailing out but all we have is my sun hat. At this stage it doesn't seem very serious and Eric, the cameraman, and I are laughing at Phil doing his best to eject water with a floppy boater whilst Benoit tries to re-start the engine.

Filming on the Kinabatangan

But very quickly the mood changes. The engine is flooded and we begin to drift with the current and the giant logs. Filthy water sloshes around our ankles as the boat pitches violently from side to side. This is no longer funny. At all. My first thought is for the camera gear. We are only halfway through the shoot and both cameras are in the boat. If we sink we have no back up.

I can smell disaster around the corner

Eric starts to paddle. He is built like the Incredible Hulk but even he's struggling to make much progress. Without the power of the motor the true strength of the current is revealed. Then the boat catches on a submerged tree. We are stuck. Water is now flooding in at an uncontrollable rate. Plus it is getting dark. And fast thanks to the billowing blackness above our heads.

Then we realize that we've left the life jackets in the other boat. The power of the current will render the relatively short distance to the bank an Olympic challenge for even the most enthusiastic swimmer. Then of course there are the crocodiles. Forget the camera gear. If the boat sinks it is unlikely that there will be a presenter to film anyway. In the space of ten minutes a jolly trip to see the elephants has morphed into a class A life-threatening emergency. Suddenly I feel like I am in a seventies disaster movie.

There is only one thing for it. Benoit decides to break his one house rule and dives into the water with a rope between his teeth. He begins dragging the boat towards the shore whilst Eric paddles for all our lives. As Benoit hauls his waterlogged body onto the riverbank I think I am in love with the man. I have never witnessed such a selfless act of heroism in my life. And hope I never have to again.

On dry land but not out of the woods yet

But once on the bank we are greeted with further challenges. It is now dark and we're stranded in the middle of the Borneo jungle. Benoit's phone has no signal and the producer's has no credit. Bitter irony. We are also being savaged by mosquitoes, which presumably can't believe their luck that four sweaty freaks are stranded on the shore with no repellent. Plus it is now raining. Hard. I'm doing a mental recce of all the ways we could die during an overnight in the Borneo jungle and run out of fingers to count on.

The semi-sucken boat leaves us stranded in the jungle

After a couple of hours spent swatting mosquitoes and seriously bonding, we spot a light coming towards us. It is Benoit's colleagues come to rescue us. Phew. We are safe at last. It is only once we get onto the boat that the true narrowness of our escape is revealed. Eric tells us that when he went for a pee, he stumbled upon a very large nest of eggs next to us on the shore. The scariest giant in the Borneo jungle is a protective saltwater crocodile mother defending her eggs. She's one big freak I am relieved not to have met.

05/16/2012

I donated my poo to science today. Not something I thought I’d ever say but I’m helping a Peruvian entomologist further her dung beetle studies and she needed volunteers.

Apparently it’s not easy to find people prepared to crap for conservation. The sad thing is, my act of charity only enticed a paltry half dozen nondescript brown beetles whereas Sarah, the entomologist, has ensnared a healthy sampling of the hundred or so species that inhabit the Amazon basin, including some rather splendid metallic blue ones the size of a conker. We suspect my coffee addiction is to blame for rendering my personal refuse repulsive to the resident beetles, so I am going to have to forgo my morning ritual for the next day and repeat the experiment all over again. Science can be brutal.

Poo pot results. Mine is on the left. It's like the difference between a gourmet gumbo and a cup a soup in terms of protein.

My involvement with dung beetle studies is a new path for me. Until recently I had a different kind of shit job. The regular kind; where you work too hard to pay your mortgage and dream of doing something different. Then came the credit crunch and I decided to escape the second winter of discontent by leaving my job with a nest egg just big enough to live a modest life in South America, without having to rob a bank.

The latest leg of my journey has led me to the Los Amigos scientific research centre deep in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, where, as a filmmaker, I’ve taken up the position of artist in residence. This tropical rainforest lays claim to being the most bio-diverse on the planet and the remote field station I now call home attracts biologists from all around the world to come and study the exceptional flora and fauna. It’s my job to study them with my camera and document their work. In my spare time I can indulge my amphibian obsession by combing the forest for freaky frogs.

The super freaky Ceratophrys - the frog that bites. Hard.

The research station is a strange place – a remote academic island in a vast green sea. With no phone and an antique internet connection, we’re divorced from conventional reality. We live in a bubble, which gets more than a bit Big Brother-like at times. Today is Sunday and I’m doing a dung beetle experiment but it could be any of day of the week. There is no such thing as a weekend – just sunny (work) days and rainy (rest) days. But the best thing is that, unlike my life in London, no two days are ever the same.

Monday morning starts with my alarm going off at 4.30am to join the tamarin team, tracking monkeys for the day. Like most people here I have surrendered to the rhythm of the jungle, waking before dawn and falling asleep not long after the sun goes down. I pull on a pair of wet socks (nothing dries in the rainy season and dry socks are a well worn fantasy) and my uniform of functional field clothes and Wellington boots. There is something very democratic about our jungle existence.We all wear the same dowdy clothes and we all smell of the same heady cocktail of mould and bug spray.

Me and Alison rocking the jungle look

Silently we trek through the jungle pre-dawn to get to the tamarin’s sleeping tree before they wake up and disappear into the jungle. Through the gloom, we peer into the canopy waiting for the first signs of life. Tamarin monkey’s morning routine is not so different from ours - a bathroom break followed by food. We watch with great interest where these morning bowel movements land and scramble through the undergrowth to collect them. No, it’s not for another dung beetle experiment, its for the tamarin team’s research. This isn’t just poo, it’s important data which reveals a wealth of genetic and behavioural information about these monkeys.

Field researcher Rhea poses precariously close to our faecal quarry

Collecting crap is actually the easy part of the job. The hard bit is following the monkeys as they travel at speed along their treetop superhighway. This involves us, lumbering ground level apes, battling though seemingly impenetrable bamboo thickets and racing up and down steep ravines to keep up with their lofty antics. It’s a serious workout made harder still by having to keep one eye on the canopy at all times so as not to lose the group of tiny brown acrobats, 40 feet in the air and each no bigger than one of Paris Hilton’s pet dogs. They don’t seem to mind being followed. At times they venture down to eye level, to stare you out before disappearing up a massive tree to gorge themselves on yet more exotic Amazonian fruits and presumably laugh about how stupid we look trying to follow them.

Me and a precious vial of monkey data

For the tamarin team, with all that staring up, chronic neck ache is an occupational hazard. Along with insect bites. The worst of which is the legendary bullet ant, so called because its sting is said to be as painful as being shot. These inch long monsters hang out on the undergrowth ready to bite unsuspecting field researchers as the blindly push their way through the thicket. Getting stung by one is inevitable and something of a right of passage. My first one came from an ant that fell out of a tree and into my shirt, which led to a severely swollen right breast and 24 hours of nausea and a migraine-like headache. Much like losing your virginity, you never forget your first bullet ant.

Super close up of a bullet ant I found online. A face only a mother could love.

Fortunately monkeys go to bed quite early and generally like to be back in their sleep tree around 4.30pm. This means that after almost twelve hours being led a merry dance around the jungle by a pack of cheeky monkeys, our fieldwork is also finally over. We head back to the lab exhausted, bearing our battle scars of cuts, bruises, bites and stings to put the day’s monkey poo booty on ice.

That's the skin of an anaconda clearly big enough to eat me

More often than not someone will have brought something curious back from the field, to be categorised and photographed - a crazy looking caterpillar, anonymous lizard or sci-fi beetle. This is one of the joys of living amongst a bunch of zoology geeks. Everyone here is as obsessed with nature as I am and happy to share their encyclopaedic knowledge of the jungle – it’s like living in an Attenborough documentary. Only itchier.

The geeks gather around an absurd caterpillar. Yes Sarah does have a monkey on her head.

We eat dinner early, just as the sun has gone down. This is the one meal of the day where all the field researchers get together to discuss the events of the day. Conversational hors d’Oeuvres generally centre around comparison of the day’s chigger bites – tiny blood sucking mites that embed themselves in your skin and itch like crazy for days - before the main course of the days triumphs and frustrations. It’s a tough life being a field scientist, and I have a newfound admiration for them. Uncovering the smallest titbit of information about an animal’s behaviour is fraught with trial and error. The jungle rarely behaves itself and does not give up its secrets easily.

Me enjoying a rare cold beer at a bar in Boca Amigos, unaware of the thirsty-looking lady behind me. I thought the guys were looking at me.

In England my evening routine generally involved getting drunk with my mates in various different dingy London locations. The only bar around here is 30 minutes downriver at the nearby mining settlement of Boca Amigos, and it’s not a place you want to hang out at night. There is gold in the Madre de Dios river, which is mined, largely illegally, by small time prospectors who come down from the Andes. There are tiny ephemeral mining communities dotted all along the river, although Boca, with five permanent families is one of the more established. With more bars than houses, it has a distinctly wild west feel. The one shop on the muddy high street sells a motley selection of necessities including canned foods, rubber boots, bug spray and pregnancy tests.

The mercury the miners use has become a pressing environmental issue. The trouble with this heavy metal is that its concentration increases up the food chain. One of the scientists at the station has been studying mercury levels in raptors and discovered levels high enough to impair reproduction. The forest here may look pristine but the blood and feathers of the birds of prey here reveal a more worrying story.

Peggy and Rene and one of their raptors

After dinner there is generally another team heading out to study the jungle at night. Tonight I’m joining a group to trap bats. It’s also the first outing into the field for the baby owl monkey that arrived at the station a few nights back. It was found half dead, by one of the station’s staff and immediately brought to the lab. Strictly speaking it should have been left there, it is strict policy here not to interfere with nature. But you would have to have a heart of stone to send this wide-eyed and whimpering baby back to the jungle to die alone in the dark. After an emergency operation to patch up his lacerated leg he now lives on one of the field researchers heads. The monkey is getting better by the day whilst the field researcher gets to grips with the trials of this unexpected motherhood – sleepless nights, potty training (essential for a baby that inhabits your hair) and loss of identity (she is now a platform for this much coo-ed over and unbearably cute newcomer).

Mookie steals another heart

The jungle at night showcases an alternate cast of animal life. The beam of your head torch reveals the sparkling eyes of giant spiders, crooning frogs and predatory snakes. We’re catching the bats using large mist nets which we check every half an hour, in between telling ghost stories and swatting the thick mist of mosquitoes. There are dozens of species of bat here and over the course of the night we trap six of them from a tiny insectivorous one to a giant fruit eating false vampire. But the prize of the night, which makes Adrian, the station’s resident batman, quiver with excitement is a medium sized leaf-nosed bat.

Me and a bat with an overly large appendage. Could I be grinning any harder?

I have never been particularly enamoured by bats but Adrian’s enthusiasm, like that of all the field scientists, is infectious. This specimen it turns out is the Dirk Diggler of bats, endowed with an oversized appendage in order to ensure his sperm’s success in impregnating the highly promiscuous females of the species. He carefully places the bat in a cloth bag in the hope that it will deliver that all-important faecal gift that will help Adrian unravel some of its secrets.

We are lucky, the bat delivers and triumphant we head back to the research station for bed. Tomorrow will be round two of the dung beetle experiment and a totally different and equally unpredictable set of scatological adventures. I can’t wait.

I know this isn't just about frogs but...I wrote this article for the Telegraph newspaper recently and you can find it online if you are lurking in that area. However it occurred to me that if you aren't a Tory voting expat you may never get to read it. So here it is, my poo-y adventure with bonus extra photos not seen in the Telegraph edition. And swear words too. The Telegraph doesn't mind poo but won't tolerate shit. Apparently.

By the way if you like this kind of crap humour then you should check out my friend Marcus's very funny blog - The Lavatory Reader

05/15/2012

A rather toad-like Peruvian man displays his somewhat undersized aquatic scrotum for the camera before plunging them into a blender

I'm in Lima, Peru where in a couple of hours I'm meant to be catching a plane to Bogota. But instead of heading for the airport, I'm speeding recklessly in the opposite direction on a wild frog chase. Lima's traffic is notoriously bad and I really shouldn't be taking such a risk, but this frog and its story are so extraordinary I cannot miss it. Ladies and gentlemen allow me to introduce Telmatobius culeus, Latin for aquatic scrotum and the key ingredient for Peruvian backstreet viagra.

I first heard about this frog back in Uruguay. A well-connected conservationist I was staying with told me that a friend of his, Ramon "Kuki" Avellaneda, had seen frogs the size of VW's whilst diving for lost Inka gold with Jacques Cousteau at the bottom of Lake Titicaca.

I was excited about the prospect of a giant crypto toad living at the bottom of a remote Andean lake. Pre-historic amphibians were monsters, several meters long that ate baby dinosaurs for breakfast. Perhaps Cousteau had discovered a relic beast - an amphibian Nessie at the bottom of this ancient lake.

I contacted Kuki, who now basks amongst the beautiful near the swish sixties seaside resort of Buzios in Brazil. On account of being deaf as a post from his years underwater, we communicated via his son who relayed the somewhat disenchanting information that his father's aquatic scrotum were merely the size of dinner plates and not cars. I could barely hide my disappointment. But the story does not end there.

The super saggy Telmatobius delivers another of his saucy come hither looks for the camera

Telmatobius Culeus it turns out may not be the behemoth ball bag of the deep but he is still an awesome beast. His laughable Latin name refers to his wrinkly appearance which has enabled him to pull the kind of trick that Houdini could only dream of.

Lake Titicaca is an unforgiving home, at nearly 4000 metres above sea level, the sun is brutal, the air is thin and freezing cold. This is no place for an amphibian. But this frog survives by living permanently at the bottom of the lake, never surfacing and breathing only through his skin, which has evolved in copious folds that drape around his scrawny frame to maximise its surface area. When necessary, he does press ups to circulate more oxygenated water around his body. He may not be pretty, but it's an amazing evolutionary adaptation by anyone's standards.

An old woman I caught pushing frogs on a minor in Cuzco market

I spot my first Titicaca frog not in a lake, but in the markets of Cuzco in the Peruvian Andes. He's languishing in a bucket with other Telmatobius species waiting to become part of a soup that the locals believe is good for your brain, amongst other things. I'm thinking I've never heard anything so dumb but the locals have a long history of using this frog in traditional medicine so I'm probably not going to win this argument. Especially as I only know a few words in Spanish and shouting "bad frog" at the woman repeatedly will probably just get me arrested and forced to drink frog soup in a bid to cure my madness.

I struggle to see how anyone could feel sexy after drinking this

I've heard that the Titcaca frogs, along with other Telmatobius species, are also the key ingredient of "frog juice" - an aphrodisiac sold in the food markets of the Peruvian capital. This traditional recipe sees the frogs placed in a blender along with a bunch of herbs and honey and drunk as a shake. How anything involving a Moulinex mixer can be described as traditional I don't know, but I do know I have to investigate. So during my change in flights at Lima I jump in a cab and head downtown in search of thisamphibian elixir. I made this short video about my frog juice drinking experience.

On the journey back to airport I explain to the cab driver that the frog in his favourite shake is now critically endangered, its numbers having declined by a whopping 80% in the last few generations. This ancient frog, a massive part of Andean culture, is on the brink of extinction thanks to people like him. I give him an extra big tip and tell him to go buy some Viagra.

Conservationists on the Bolivian side of the lake are working hard to protect the frog, doing much needed outreach to educate local communities and working to uphold the law against it being sold in markets. But worryingly, recent dives have uncovered dozens of dead frogs - a sign that the dreaded Chytrid fungus may also have arrived at the frog's home. This frog needs all the help it can get.

You wouldn't like your balls put in a blender, so to help save the amazing aquatic scrotum and other endangered amphibians like them - please go here and donate some cash.

05/09/2012

Living doll - if cute could kill, the sloths at the Aviaros del Caribe orphanage would make a formidable army

I’ve travelled thousands of miles to meet an animal I first saw on youtube. I’m not generally a fan of cute LOL viral funnies but Taz, a very itchy baby sloth, was different. She looked like a miniature hairy Yoda and possessed Jedi-strength comic powers, reducing the grown men who made the video to giggling fools (their helpless laughter is almost as funny as the scratchy sloth - watch below).

A bit of googling revealed a secret subculture of silly sloth videos, all filmed at the world's only sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica, which just happened to be looking for volunteers. I had to go.

Much like junkies, baby sloths spend most of their time nodding off or scratching but would never steal your wallet

I've always been a fan of sloths. They're wonderfully freaky, yet perfectly adapted to their slow arboreal lifestyle. Impressively camouflaged courtesy of their mottled green fur - a miniature eco-system which harbours two species of algae, numerous insects and a moth which refuses to live anywhere else. Their nerves have even evolved to react slower so they don't flinch at loud noises - there's no point saying boo to a sloth - surely making them nature's most chilled-out animals.

Boo! Blame it on the metabolism...two thirds of a sloth's body weight can be taken up by it's stomach contents which take up to a month to digest.

They have very few natural predators and the only time they're vulnerable is when they leave the trees once a week and descend to the ground to poo. This behaviour has befuddled scientists for many years. One of the theories is that their solitary lifestyle affords few chances to hook up with the opposite sex and these toilet stops are a good way to meet other sloths. Very George Michael.

Why did the sloth cross the road? To escape the stupid American tourist with the video camera, who went on to post this tragi-comedy video of a sloth learning the highway code the hard way. Why they didn't put down the camera and help the poor animal is a mystery.

But evolution didn't prepare sloths for the power lines and roads which now crisscross Costa Rica's jungles. Individuals that have been zapped by electricity or run over, wind up here at the Aviaros del Caribe sanctuary where they're cared for by the legendary sloth whisperer Judy Arroyo and her staff.

Sloths sleep up to 18 hours a day

The sloths at the sanctuary don't disappoint and are just as adorable as the video suggests. There are two species here: the two-toed sloths are the ones that look like the result of a crazy hybridisation experiment between a wookie and and a pig, and the three-toed which have the medieval haircut and enigmatic smile.

Three-toed sloth

Two-toed sloth

Regular readers will wonder what I'm doing writing about a sloth sanctuary - this blog is about my adventures in Latin America, trying to find out how to save the world's amphibians. Well, I've realised that frogs have a bit of PR problem and are not as popular as they deserve to be given how diverse, funny and amazing they are. So I've decided to pimp out the sloths to try and save the frogs.

This little guy I found in Peru is easily as cute as a baby sloth and so much more in need of your love

Such is the viral power of the baby sloth, I decided to make my own super cute sloth video to lure people to my blog to discover how cute frogs are and how much they need our help. I released it a few days ago and sure enough it's gone viral. Here is my video - "Meet the sloths":

So for all the LOL baby sloth fans that have read this far - take a moment to think about the frogs. These cuddly sloths are not an endangered species but the world's frogs are dying out at an alarming rate. Like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie, forty percent are going extinct thanks to a deadly fungus that's sweeping the planet. It's the biggest extinction crisis since the dinosaurs were wiped off the planet but not enough people care as it involves amphibians and not LOL furry cuties like sloths or pandas. You can change that.

The Costa Rican red-eyed tree frog is being killed by a deadly fungus

So stay tuned to this site, spread the word and let's make the frog's go viral for a change. If you really want to help then you could even make a tiny donation. In return I promise to deliver more baby sloth cute crack to feed your addiction.

It is exhausting being so sweet

There are many things that can be done to help the frogs without having to open your purse.

1 Don't use pesticides and buy organic. Amphibians are very sensitive to pollution as they breathe through their skin. Atrazine in particular (the world's commonest weedkiller) is doing a top job of damaging frog populations world wide.

04/26/2012

I’ve just had my heart stolen by a very slippery customer. At little more than two inches long and disguised as a monkey poo I’ll admit he’s not your regular Romeo. But looks can be deceiving.

He’s a Bolitoglossa salamander – the first I’ve ever seen in the flesh. I found him hanging about in a Bromeliad in the magical mist-soaked forests of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada mountain. What I love about him, apart from his dear little face with its watery eyes and sad smile, is the fact he is so very, very slow. I have a weakness for nature’s slowcoaches but Mr Bolitoglossa here takes the biscuit. Or at least he would if he could reach it in time. He’s a serious contender for the slowest animal on earth. Check out the video below featuring an amorous male making his move on a lady (best watched while listening to Prince’s 'Slow love').

Let's make it last all night, baby. Literally

Some may be inclined to mock the romantic credentials of a plodding poop lookalike but not everything about this salamander is slack. Bolitoglossa is Greek for bullet tongue - evolution has equipped Mr B with a spring-loaded licker that can extend more than half his body length in about 7 milliseconds. That's 1/50th the blink of an eye which means he could stick his tongue out at you and you'd never even notice. Scientists measuring Mr B’s tongue thrusts deemed it 'the most explosive muscle in nature' - a positively pornographic title. Who’s laughing now? Mrs B I'd imagine.

He may look innocent but Mr B is a stealth Ninja

With his cloak of invisibility, sly moves and sticky bullet tongue Mr B is one of nature’s most accomplished stealth Ninja’s. He's even capable of creeping up on a cricket - a distinctly flighty customer with an almost supernatural ability to spot a potential stalker thanks to microscopic hair-like sensors capable of detecting movement from minute changes in air pressure. It may not be as glamorous as cheetah's chasing wildebeest on the Serengheti but in the evolutionary arms race between predator and prey the Bolitoglossa have been remarkably successful, evolving into over 100 different species.

The El Dorado reserve in Colombia's Sierra Nevada Mountains is an enviable home indeed

But global warming is changing all that. As lungless salamanders these amphibians need moist conditions so they can breathe through their skin, which is why they like to live in cool damp cloud forests on tropical mountains in Central and South America. But climate change is forcing them higher and higher up the slopes and the rapidly looming crisis is that once they reach the top, there will be nowhere left for them to go.

The Giant Chinese Salamander's neighbour, the Giant Panda, has no such problem with even the most dubious conservation efforts attracting millions of precious conservation dollars. But the image of brand Panda is that of a cute, harmless bear whilst the salamander is considered something of a slippery monster. But as we've seen with the peculiarly cunning Mr B, you can't judge a book by its cover. Check out this rare footage of a wild panda chowing down on a dead deer. Panda eats Bambi - who's cute now?

If you think it's time the salamander got a bit of cash and attention then Pro Aves are a Colombian conservation organisation working hard to protect the Bolitoglossa salamander's home, a biodiversity hotspot home to hundreds of endemic species of bird, amphibian and mammal. To support them you can donate here or pay a visit to the spectacularly beautiful El Dorado reserve in the Sierra Nevada mountains with genuine eco-tourism outfit Eco-turs.

04/26/2011

My most exotic adventure yet: to the end of the Piccadilly line to help a toad get laid. Not personally, of course. Despite the learing grin.

It's a chilly February afternoon when I get the text.

"The toads are on the move"

Enigmatic it may be, but like some sort of amphibian secret agent I know exactly what it means. Along with a handful of other people across London I've been waiting for this missive for several weeks. The time has come for us to mobilise and put our training into practise. In a single message my Saturday night has morphed from a date with a nice chap in a cosy restaurant to one with a bewildered toad on a road in Cockfosters.

Who knew the British equivalent of the great Wildebeest migration across the Maasai Mara happens at the end of the Piccadilly line? But apparently it does. As soon as the thermometer strays above 5 degrees the toads of Trent park wake up, yawn and start thinking about sex. It’s time for them to make the mile long pilgrimage from their winter woodland hideaway to their ancestral pond. This they do en masse along an ancient migratory route; one that they've been following since before Henry IV first declared the park a Royal hunting ground back in the fifteenth century. Upon arrival the fun really begins. The Trent park toads are the ultimate suburban swingers and and embark upon the kind of orgy that would make even Charlie Sheen blush.

Toads are very fussy about where they breed. But this nondescript patch of water in North London is the equivalent of the Playboy mansion for the local toads and worth risking roads to get to.

It's a treacherous journey. Over the centuries the randy toads have had to dodge not just the pounding of Royal horses hooves but the boots of German officers interned in the park during its brief spell as an open prison during WWII. And now cars. An estimated 20 tonnes of toads get squished every year on Britain's roads making the location of the A111 beside the toad’s ancestral pond more of a menace than goose-stepping Nazis. Which is where I come in. I'm the latest volunteer for the local toad patrol and it's my job to ensure the Trent park toads get past the cars and get laid. Their future depends on it.

Andy has been watching toads copulate for almost twenty years

I'm excited about the prospect of witnessing such a spectacle. Although somewhat nervous about creeping around a park after dark. I'm loitering self-consciously at the entrance, scanning the road for toads when, thankfully, Andy arrives. Andy's been watching the Trent park toads for almost two decades. Worryingly he tells me the last few years haven't yielded the usual bumper crop.

"It used to be like an ocean of toads. So many you'd be scared to move for fear of treading on them. I had to have a word with the local running club. On the 'night of the toads' as I call it, they were trampling them to death"

We patrol the length of the road a few times. Nothing. Have the toads all fallen foul of jogging feet and speeding wheels? Thankfully Andy thinks it's nothing that sinister, just a bit too cold and dry for them to be feeling fruity just yet.

Then I spot a single male hopping about in the grass. I pick him up and he makes a sweet chirruping sound more like a bird than an amphibian. Toads get a bad rap and are generally associated with myths about warts and witchcraft. But this little guy is an essential link in the foodchain; the gardener's best friend he eats slugs and snails and in turn he provides otters and hedgehogs with a decent meal. It's true they do have certain magical qualities and have been known to predict earthquakes. Which makes them significantly smarter than pandas and far more deserving of our attention in my book.

I pop him down and he plops in the pond. Early to the party, I'm hoping he bags himself a choice female. Or two. One thing's for sure. He needs to father as many tadpoles as possible. It's not just joggers and cars these toads have to worry about. The killer fungal disease, Chytrid, has been detected in amphibian populations all around the UK. With numbers in decline by more than 50% over the last decade, Bufo Bufo, Britain's common toad is in serious danger of needing a new name.

"I'm into hanving sex, not into making love. Come give me a hug", Mr Toad channels 50 cent in order to keep the species going.

03/18/2011

Alonso and I admire a glass frog in the Choco, Colombia where the greatest threat to the astonishing amphibian diversity is peace. Photo by Robin Moore

I’m looking for a lost frog. The Mesopotamian beaked toad to be precise. It’s been missing for almost a hundred years, which some might say is beyond careless. The last person to see it, an American biologist by the name of Gladwyn Noble, was also the first person to discover it. I’m wondering whether the fact it’s been mislaid for so long has anything to do with the curious, frankly misleading, name he gave it. It suggests I should be looking for this amphibian Mr Burns behind a sofa in Turkey as oppose to scrabbling through leaf litter, as I am, in the Colombian jungle.

The reality is this missing toad is just one of thousands of frogs vanishing off the planet. The world’s amphibians are in the grips of the worst extinction crisis since the dinosaurs were wiped out, with over a third of all species heading for the exit sign. In many cases this is happening quite suddenly and mysteriously. The chief suspect is a deadly fungus which is being aided and abetted by the holy trinity of environmental bogeymen: climate change, pollution and habitat loss.

Don't adjust your set: the Colombian rainforest is full of other-worldy amphibians like this purple treefrog with blue eyes

Colombia tops the charts for endangered species. The particular stories behind their disappearances, I’m about to discover, add a surreal twist to the already extraordinary global frog-icide. Our search for the beaked toad uncovers a topsy-turvy world of pharmaceutical frog-nappers, narco-terrorist pseudo-conservationists and German's with frogs up their bums. You couldn't make it up.

My quest begins in Medellin, Colombia’s second largest city, where I join a crack team of top international herpetologists, who have been dispatched here to track down the elusive beaked toad, as part of the charity Conservation International’s global search for lost frogs. Over the next few months there will be expeditions in 18 countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia to track down one hundred amphibians believed to be missing in action. Many are evolutionary oddities, distinct in their class, like the gastric brooding frog of Australia, which incubates its young in its stomach. Their loss is significant not just to nature but also to science. The hope is that this campaign will uncover secret populations still clinging on in pockets of wilderness that can then be conserved.

‘Colombia is frog central,’ expedition leader Dr Robin Moore tells me. ‘With nearly eight hundred recorded species, it almost certainly has the highest diversity. Brazil officially has a few more but it’s seven times the size of Colombia and more thoroughly surveyed. The exciting thing about this country is that so much of it has yet to be explored’

Glass frog glasses, the latest fashion wow on the herp scene

At this point of the story I should probably come clean. Like the rest of Team Frog I’m also utterly obsessed with amphibians. I love their freaky metamorphic lifestyle; I love their idiosyncratic biology and I love their endless diversity. You can never get bored of frogs. I’m baffled by the tyranny of cute, which sees the so-called charismatic mega-fauna command the lion’s share of attention and conservation dollars. You’ve seen one baby panda, you’ve seen them all. And while the world drools over cuddly furry things a whole class of animals is being erased from the planet, throwing the rest of the food chain into a tailspin. It’s, quite frankly, froggist – and potentially disastrous.

I recently spent six months travelling around Latin America investigating the amphibian declines for a documentary. But I’ve been desperate to visit Colombia as it holds the best opportunity for me to fulfill my life’s ambition, the discovery of a new species. Stuff the Mesopotamian beaked toad, I’m on a secret mission to discover the Lucy frog and achieve amphibian immortality.

All hail the hypno-toad; the New Granda cross banded treefrog has mesmerising qualities

Colombia’s geography reads like a biological explorer’s wish list; Amazon rainforest, tropical islands, vast savannas. It's got the lot. But it’s the tropical Andes that make it such a Darwinian machine - a contender for the most biodiverse place on earth.

Fellow frog hunter Dr Wes Sechrest of Global Wildlife Conservation tells me, ‘Everyone talks about saving the Amazon, which is of course important, but it’s largely homogenous. In terms of biodiversity these equatorial mountains are the real factories of evolution. But very little is being done to conserve them.’

Sunrise over life's most productive factories of evolution

Like islands in the sky, every mountain and valley has evolved its own set of unique species. But much of this biological treasure remains undiscovered. The cloud forests of the Andes have guerrillas in their mist: they are the hiding place for left wing rebel groups like the FARC whose reputation for kidnap, narco-trafficking and mass murder has understandably deterred all but the most dedicated biologists.

Which is why a mission like ours needs a political pilot. Ours is Alonso Quevedo, president of Pro Aves, Colombia’s biggest conservation organisation. He’s a taciturn chap with an arsenal of anecdotes more in keeping with a secret agent than a biologist.

‘To do conservation in this country you have to learn to live with the threat of guerrillas,’ he states matter-of-factly. ‘The FARC often chose to hide out in the thickest forest, so we’re both interested in the same areas’.

Me and the Colombian wing of Team Frog AKA biologists with balls

It clearly takes sizeable cojones to risk fieldwork in this country. A wrong move could cost you your life. Alonso’s colleague Juan had a near death experience whilst trying to protect a rare parrot.

‘These people are very paranoid’ he tells me, ‘They thought I was with the paramilitary so they started shooting at me. My life was randomly saved by a passing friend who confirmed I was a park ranger. Only then did they stop’. I consider my expedition clothes and realise the perils of wearing camo in this country are significantly worse than a dressing down from the fashion police.

Alonso's breakfast. Enough said.

It’s a seven-hour drive along squiggly car advert mountain roads to our final destination, the soggy jungles of Choco - owner of the rare honour of being the wettest place on earth. Here, straddling the equator, the westernmost cordillera of the Andes slides down into the Pacific whose hot damp oceanic air dumps thirteen metres of rain on these steep mountainous slopes every year. The early explorers described it as a Turkish bath. It’s quite literally frog heaven.

I’ve never crossed a meteorological border before. But as we snake our way up the eastern side of the range, the neighbouring province is all sunshine and smiles. A pastoral fantasyland featuring adobe farmhouses draped in geraniums and farmers tending a patchwork of crops. It’s really rather idyllic. But as we cross over the crest of the range, we’re greeted by a wall of rain and two teenage soldiers brandishing submachine guns. Welcome to Choco, a forgotten land of steamy jungles and hot politics.

This is Colombia’s wild west. And that’s saying something. Cut off from the rest of the country by its crazy climate and corrugated terrain, it’s home to a smattering of cowboys, indians and the descendents of African slaves. It is also the scene of some of the country’s most violent standoffs between the FARC and Paramilitary, as they vie for a slice of the countries $13 billion cocaine industry. The lower altitudes are where much of the coca – the raw material for cocaine – is grown and processed, near the coast for easy transportation to neighbouring Panama and beyond. It’s not the sort of place to suddenly start snooping around, even for lost frogs.

The tearing down of the rainforest makes landslides all the more common. You can see why they are pretty deadly.

The dirt road we are bumping along on – incredibly one of the three main arteries feeding the entire province – was until eighteen months ago controlled by the FARC, whose roadblock’s deterred all but the most dedicated traffic. But in the last few years the government has staged a massive crackdown on these left wing rebels, killing several of their key commanders and forcing them back to the furthest corners of the country. Now our progress is slowed by frequent friskings from pimply government soldiers who look too young to hold a machine gun. But their presence makes it finally safe to explore. Alonso thinks we may be the first biologists to visit this jungle in decades making it the perfect place to find out lost toad.

This soldier stumbled out of the jungle and found us sifting through leaf litter. Here Alonso explains to him that although it sounds unlikely we really are here looking for frogs.

The search involves wading up streams, peering under decaying logs and riffling through leaf litter. ‘Watch out for snakes’ Alonso warns breezily. What kind I ask? Fer-de-Lance. Oh. Goody. Only the most deadly viper in Latin America. Its venom is one of those fancy ones that fries your brain and melts your flesh. A sort of serpentine Mike Tyson, the snake is huge and famously aggressive, if mercifully stupid. When chased by a Fer-de-Lance you’re advised to drop your backpack. The snake will then stop and attack that instead of you. A fine idea providing you aren't planning your escape in knee deep mud.

Our first day’s foraging brings no sign of the beaked toad but instead we uncover an Aladdin’s cave of amphibians; delicate glass frogs whose cling-film skin exposes their beating hearts, psychedelic sticky-fingered tree frogs and an undiscovered species of ancient toad that’s matt black with red eyes. The frog geeks are giddy with excitement. Me included.

‘I’ve never found so many species so fast. Let alone just a short walk from the road’ says Robin. ‘Frogs are a great indicator of a healthy ecosystem. The forest here is obviously in great shape’.

So it should be. The very same dangers that kept biologists out of this jungle have also prevented the rest of the world from plundering its riches. Conflict, it turns out, can be the conservationist’s most unlikely friend.

‘It’s the same story in Congo, Laos and Burma. Areas of prolonged civil unrest are home to some of the world’s most intact forest,’ Paul Salaman of the World Land Trust tells me. ‘It’s not PC, but landmines are probably the very best form of conservation there is. A landmine notice keeps everyone out'

This very angry looking toad was just one of several potentially new species uncovered during our trip.

Having a viscous mass murdering terrorist group with a penchant for kidnap hiding out in the forest is almost as effective as a liberal sprinkling of landmines. Alonso explains, ‘If the FARC occupy the forest then it’s forbidden to cut down trees or kill animals. Not for conservation reasons, but because they don’t like people removing their cover or wandering about with guns’

One herpetologist even went so far as to name a new species of toad, Atelopus farci, stating that ‘the species is dedicated to the FARC for its conservation, but not political, efforts’. Ten years later however, he was held captive by a rival group, whilst surveying for new species in their territory. Perhaps they were annoyed they didn’t have a toady mascot they could call their own. He was released safely but probably wishes he’d never started the name game. Now everyone’s going to want one.

Glass frog photo by Robin Moore

The FARC’s presence may inadvertently protect the forest they occupy, but their involvement in the drug trade means they’re unlikely to be sharing the podium with Al Gore anytime soon. The destruction of the rainforest to grow coca is public enemy number one for Colombia’s wildlife, destroying an estimated 3000sqkm of precious primary forest every year. To add insult to injury their favourite place to grow the stuff is in the National Parks. Cultivating on public land conveniently does away with any irksome finger pointing at landowners. Warriors they may be, but eco-warriors they’re not.

It’s hard to choose, but my favourite frog of the day is a splendid Harlequin poison dart frog, a threatened species found only in the lowlands of Colombia. Ironically the presence of the FARC shielded this animal from an increasing threat to frogs and a known threat to humans - kidnap.

The new morph of Harlequin Dart frog has a 'don't mess with me' look about him

The last few years have seen an explosion in a rather peculiar fashion for keeping frogs as pets. This in turn is fuelling a booming multi-million dollar illegal trade. Most popular are poison dart frogs who come in a kaleidoscope of colour combinations. These have evolved to ward off predators by warning of their toxicity but ironically have the opposite effect on fanatic frog-fanciers, who like to collect them like stamps. The rarer the better.

Robin tells me, ‘Many of these species inhabit very small ranges. After habitat destruction and disease, poaching is probably the biggest threat they face, enough to drive small populations to extinction.’

Even evolution makes mistakes: this frogs resemblance to a certain flag could be its downfall

Proving there’s no such thing as intelligent design, one morph has inadvertently evolved a perfect red circle in the middle of its back. This makes it the target of Japanese collectors keen to possess a frog that sports a facsimile of their flag. Our dart frog is jet black with yellow spots, a never-seen-before morph. As such it could fetch thousands of dollars on the black market.

According to Alonso’s investigation the local Embera Indians, who once used these animals to poison their arrows, are at the bottom of the chain in this market and paid as little as one dollar a frog. The dons of the frog-smuggling world it turns out are the Germans whose desire to be the first at everything even extends to frog collecting. Their methods of achieving this are, in my opinion, reasonable grounds for WW3.

The local Embera women were captivating in their fancy dresses

Most are carried out in cargos of tropical fish, but small time smugglers are known to resort to kinkier methods; stuffing frogs into film canisters and clearing customs with them strapped to their thighs. Or even shoved where the sun doesn’t shine. Ouch. All of which makes you wonder how one would explain away a severe case of croaking. Let alone deal with an escapee poison dart frog, heading north.

Our Harlequin dart frog risks being snatched not just for its good looks but also its secret stash of drugs. Alonso’s most shocking discovery is a second, more organised ring of frog-nappers supplying the pharmaceutical industry.

The first frog we found was this male Andean Poison dart frog seen here carrying a tadpole on its back. They are dedicated parents and do not breed explosively like other species making them especially vulnerable to collection pressures. Photo by Robin Moore

Amphibian skin harbours a pharmacopoeia of chemicals that could provide cures for everything from cancer to AIDS. Our Harlequin poison dart frog for example is known to secrete a toxin that blocks neurotransmission and could play a role in treating Alzheimers. A new morph like this could contain the chemical blueprints for dozens of other medicines.

One of the problems faced by the pharma companies is that the frogs don’t synthesise the poisons themselves. Like little bio-prospectors they sequester them from their diet of ants, termites and beetles. So captive bred animals are no use to scientists, whose research can burn through hundreds of frogs. To isolate epibatadine, a painkiller two hundred times stronger than morphine, took over seven hundred Phantasmal dart frogs. It’s perhaps no coincidence this species is listed as endangered.

It strikes me that this is a perfect example of the value of biodiversity. This invisible interconnectedness puts a price tag on preserving the entire web of life. Even the termites.

It wasn't all frogs - this chrysalis was rather beautiful too

Quevedo is keen to buy up private land from farmers and establish reserves complete with guards, to protect Colombia’s biological treasure trove. He has created eighteen so far in other parts of the country and is looking for funding to start protecting the Choco. But it is a race against the clock. The streams that we are surveying for natural riches are also being eyed up by gold prospectors. Experts are predicting that Colombia could be the scene of the last great global gold rush, attracting 4.5 billion worth if investment from international mining companies over the next 10 years. Now that Choco is becoming safer, its vast deposits of alluvial gold can finally be exploited annihilating our amphibian El Dorado in the process.

‘These are not romantic gold miners going in with pans. To get the alluvial deposits requires huge machinery. Sucking up everything and dumping tons of mercury into the water’ Paul tells me, ‘Conservationists have to move faster than we’ve ever moved before or the whole area will be razed in ten to fifteen years’

It’s a twisted world in which the greatest threat to biodiversity is peace. But it’s perhaps even more perverse when you consider the economics of the situation.

The cost of conserving a slice of this pristine forest, containing what is perhaps the greatest concentration of unique biodiversity on the planet, is a laughable one hundred pounds a hectare. The real value of this land in terms of its role in purifying the water, recycling carbon and as a potential source of bio-chemicals is something we’re just beginning to quantify.

But with an international drug war being fought on its doorstep, the Colombian government is focussed on restoring peace and attracting foreign investment and not conservation. This means that Quevedo has to look to international NGOs for support. There are a handful of international charities dedicated to saving frogs like Amphibian Ark but according to Robin Moore, ‘getting donors for amphibian conservation is harder than finding the Mesopotamian beaked toad’.

Which is saying something. At the end of our three-day toad hunt our primary quarry has sadly eluded us. I like to think he was sitting in a tree looking down and laughing at us. Not missing presumed dead. Robin’s consolation is the discovery of a different species of beaked toad, which he believes may be new to science. This joins a handful of potential new species including one found by me.

This little film captures the moment I caught my first frog of the trip which just happened to be a potential new species

My herpetological holy grail is a little rocket frog. These tend to your classic little brown jobs: dowdy and unassuming. But my one has bright scarlet legs like he’s wearing red drainpipes. What a dude. It’s unlikely he’ll be called the Lucy frog though. Auctioning off scientific names has become a valuable money-spinner for conservation organisations. Which is fine by me. I’ll happily trade my amphibian immortality to ensure he’s still here in a hundred years time.

To support Pro Aves mission to conserve the Choco you can find out more about them and donate here

This blog post first appeared as a feature in the Saturday Telegraph magazine and can be read online here

06/20/2010

The world's gone bonkers for sloths. It seems my little video featuring the sleepy residents of the world's only sloth orphanage is the equivalent of grade A cute crack for millions of LOL squee loving junkies. It's been watched by nearly 2 million people around the world from Greece (one of the first countries where the clip went viral - but then they needed a laugh that week what with the small matter of total economic meltdown) to Guam (66 Guamians have now watched which is presumably the entire population).

I am of course delighted that people have fallen for the sloths. They may not be your traditional cutie-pie pin ups, with their terrible table manners and lazy reputation, but they're hugely charismatic and deserve to be loved. Especially if it helps spread awareness about the need to protect their habitat from man's further incursion (which is what's ultimately responsible for all the orphaned babies).

Fame can of course be a poisoned chalice so the sloths are lucky they have their adopted mum, sloth whisperer Judy Arroyo, to ensure that their new-found celebrity doesn't go to their heads. They don't want to end up like poor old Knut the polar bear, the Macauley Culkin of the animal world.

A few years ago the world went nuts for Knut, a cute 'n' fluffy baby polar bear born at Berlin zoo. His first public appearance was greeted with a frenzy of media attention and attended by no less than 500 journalists. He became the star of his own feature film and even made the cover of Vanity Fair.

But within a year Knut had grown from a snowy white powder puff into a 17 stone mottled grey brute the size of an angry man. As such, his popularity waned and no amount of performing tricks with his favourite dirty sock could bring back the crowds that once thronged outside his enclosure. When Knut started to behave oddly zoologists declared that he had become a psychopath, addicted to human attention. A tragic tale indeed.

Adult Knut is a massive cute *fail* for the squee generation

The Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz was the first to propose our love of cuteness as a scientific phenomenon. He believed that human attraction to animals with big eyes, oversized heads and baby-like vulnerability is an evolutionary adaptation to ensure that we nurture our children. More recently scientists have discovered that cute imagery really does work like crack by stimulating the reward centre of the brain in the same way that sex, cocaine or good food does. It's powerful, primal stuff.

Warning: baby sloths are highly addictive

Even scientists aren't immune to the lure of cute. A recent study showed that a rampant bias exists among researchers towards "cute and interesting" animals, with threatened large mammal species dominating studies and appearing in a whopping 500 times as many published papers as threatened amphibians. Teenage girls falling for Furbies is one thing but scientists choosing study subjects that give them the biggest cutegasm is a worrying trend indeed.

If you like your animals slothful then these guys take the biscuit, moving as if they are in and on glue. Check out this video of a couple in the throws of a mating dance. It takes almost 30 seconds for the amorous male to move his puddy back foot purposefully towards the female. Something which is, I think, both hilarious and incredibly cute and best watched whilst listening to Prince's "Slow love".

These salamanders are lungless wonders whose elongated bodies absorb all the oxygen they require through their skin alone. Which is why they have such a slow metabolic rate and movement. Like sloths they too come from an ancient evolutionary line and survive predation by camouflage. In their case by mimicking monkey poo - such subterfuge being necessary as running away is simply not an option.

It would be sad if this evolutionary strategy, successful for many millenia, is thwarted by the fact that there is nothing cute about looking like a slow moving turd. But these salamanders really need your help.

Their number one problem is climate change. They live on the tops of mountains and as it warms up there is nowhere else for them to go. Their habitat is also being destroyed so NCF are working with various partners to protect them and their mountain top homes.